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Designer Pit Crew

About a year ago, Brian Bendig, President of Cavalier Tool, presented a very interesting project to the Generator team. Having acquired a Porsche Cayman GT4, our client wanted us to have a bit of fun designing the decals for his new ride. We should mention Brian is a race enthusiast; this car would be competitively driven and transported in a trailer to and from events. And what better way than to do it all in style!

That’s where Generator jumped to it and eagerly began the creative process of outfitting the Porsche. Through numerous concepts, we delivered a winner featuring iconic Martini Racing flair emblazoned along every panel of the car. The minimalistic bold red and blue lines lead the eye along the body of the vehicle to evoke speed, with accents on the bumpers, and Martini logo on the hood and doors. The approved design was then brought to be painstakingly applied to the Porsche. To everyone’s surprise, news and photos of the car ignited online. From a single Reddit post, to being featured on car sites from across the world in multiple languages, our project was in the high beams of Martini livery.

The fun was just getting started. Next, we had the amazing opportunity to wrap the trailer that the Porsche would travel in. We had no existing template at our disposal, so we took careful measurements of every facet of the trailer and created our own to build upon. Our client envisioned artwork to reflect his driving spirit and personality, and for this we required a skilled hand on the Generator pit crew.

Enter illustrator Mike Lovell, who breathed life into our ideas. The Generator vision was to have the pit boss surrounded by his gremlin-like pit crew breaking out from the trailer’s interior, unleashing a beast from within. Direction included characters reminiscent of Iron Maiden’s “Eddie the Head” mascot in the style of artist Derek Riggs, plus “easter eggs” in tribute of Brian’s life and personality. Tying it all together would be the Martini stripes running along the sides of the trailer, reacting to the grunge and contortion of the overall scene.

Mike and the Generator team brainstormed how the various elements and characters would intertwine. We knew we wanted the trailer to appear to be getting ripped open by the characters, so a striking visual of torn, twisted metal would give the illusion of exposed holes in the trailer’s body, “revealing” the Porsche inside. To be convincing, it was established that the illustrative style would need to be realistic, with heavy emphasis on lighting. We wanted the characters to appear ready to jump off the trailer! Once our idea was cemented, Mike was set to draft up pencils to present to Brian. We got the green light, and were off to the races with refining the drawings digitally, applying the completed artwork onto the template to give a clear example of the finished work. The final mockups were ready to be applied to the trailer. Needless to say, the wait to see the final product was driving us around the track with anticipation!

And finally, it was complete. The Generator team took a step back to take in the fruits of our labour: there stood a fully wrapped Porsche, complete with it’s own customized trailer. From conception through delivery, careful measurements, countless revisions, and employing a mix of traditional and digital methods, we were pleased to deliver our very best to our client.

So keep an open eye for a Martini Porsche Cayman GT4 on your drive around Windsor-Essex. We feel it’s a shining example of our team’s artistic capability, and it’s pretty neat to say we have a portfolio piece on the hottest set wheels we know!